


Oh You Men

by birdbrains



Series: Old ERF [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Humor, Muteness, Nonverbal Communication, deep conditioned triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 01:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3338564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdbrains/pseuds/birdbrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky is grudgingly okay with Steve knowing about his deep conditioned triggers and other Winter Soldier problems, but he doesn't want Sam to know. One of the triggers gets activated when they're all together and he loses the ability to talk, so that really pisses him off and he starts kicking a trash can. Etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh You Men

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series. The main thing is that Bucky has deep conditioned triggers implanted by Hydra where certain things (occasionally sounds, mostly tastes) would cause him to lose or gain abilities for a set period of time--either as punishments, restraints, or to increase his efficiency on missions. He doesn't remember them all and ends up running into them pretty often. He also has more typical problems with relating to people as friends because he's only used to being around handlers.

Bucky reached out and turned over the grilled ham and cheese sandwich on the stove. “You were saying,” he said.

“I’m not just using you for your arm that can touch hot things! I sincerely want to have a cooking club with you and Steve,” Sam said.

“So this is completely about us all being friends. This doesn’t thrill you at all,” Bucky said, chopping the grilled cheese in half with his finger. He picked it up out of the pan and cautiously poked it with his right hand. It must have been too hot, because he kept holding it in his left hand and blew on it.

“I think you’re not understanding what Sam means by a cooking club,” Steve said.

“What, does he want to cook meth or something?” Bucky said.

“What’s a meth?” Steve asked.

“I want to make birthday cake from a box and then decorate it to look like a graveyard with gummy worms and sugar tombstones,” Sam said. “That’s my plan for the first week. The second week, I want to make a zoo with animal crackers. The third week, ocean cake--you know, with Swedish fish? This really isn’t about how cool you think your hand is--I just want your totally regular hand to pick up a fork and bring pieces of cake to your mouth. Are you with me?”

“No,” Bucky said. “Can’t you think of something with rock candy?”

“No, I already bought supplies for the first three weeks and you are not fucking it up,” Sam said. “I have it written in my calendar. March 19--graveyard cake with Steve and Bucky at the first meeting of my cooking club.”

“You can’t write us into your calendar before you ask us,” Bucky said. “It’s not my fault we’re in there. Okay, get this--the graveyard is next to a cave made out of rock candy.”

“Steve, what language do I have to say the word ‘No’ in so he can understand?” Sam asked.

“Can I have some of that?” Steve asked Bucky and he handed him half the sandwich. It wasn’t like Bucky was an especially good cook in general, but there was something special about things that he made with his hand. He could adjust things a little more subtly than someone who had to use a spatula. Bucky gave Sam a look with his hands raised, like, so?

“I’m not saying it’s not cool when you do that,” Sam said. “It’s cool, okay? You can take the cake tin out of the oven without wearing mittens. Ooh.”

\--///--

That had been a few days ago. “So, what do you want to tell Sam about the mix CD?” Steve asked.

“Nothing to tell,” Bucky said.

“What if he wants to dance to it with us?”

“Steve, no sane person would want to dance with you, baby,” Bucky said. Ever since they kissed he had started calling Steve “baby” and “sweetheart” like Steve was a girl he was dating. It embarrassed Steve, but he had yet to put a stop to it for some reason.

“Don’t call me baby in front of Sam,” he managed. Bucky looked at him like he was a maniac.

“Of course I wouldn’t do that. You’re the one who has no sense of personal privacy. Just because Sam’s our friend doesn’t mean he has to know about every detail. It was my fault that happened with the song, anyway.”

Steve started to sputter.

Bucky said, “No, hear me out. They knew what they were doing putting the trigger in the middle of the song--it’s so it wouldn’t happen by accident. I had plenty of warning, I just didn’t recognize what I was remembering. I just have to be more clearheaded about that stuff.”

“I mean, I should have realized something was happening--you had your bullshit face on,” Steve said. It was the wrong thing to say; Bucky looked a little put out. “Sorry, do you not want me to know when you’re bullshitting me?”

He waited for Bucky to answer, but Bucky had a vaguely stunned look on his face. He looked like he was struggling to speak. Steve’s brain was starting to put together what had happened, and he was trying to figure out what he could do when Bucky looked him in the eye and reached up and tapped his fingers, gently, on his own temple. “It just threw me, uh, a curveball,” he said and half smiled.

“Yeah, I--” Steve wasn’t sure if Bucky was more worried about the idea that he couldn’t convincingly lie to Steve, or that he’d been caught lying. He’d been going to say that he knew things had gone wrong soldier but maybe it was better to make Bucky feel like he could hide it. So he didn’t say anything.

Bucky winced, hard. It took a minute for his face to smooth out again and he said quietly, “If I don’t trust you then there’s no point to any of it.” Then he started counting things off on his fingers, not looking at Steve. “First of all I’m supposed to do what they want, and of course like I told you I start thinking ahead, to try and stay out of trouble, right? But really, that’s wrong, it’s more smarts than they want me to have. They want me translucent-level honest. It’s not like I’m not loyal, but I just didn’t want to get in trouble, so I tried--I wasn’t trying to be manipulative. Anyway,” he smiled at Steve, “this time around you’re supposed to be my friend, so it’s not just that I manipulate you, it’s the fact that I shouldn’t be scared of making you angry, so if you find out I’m scared, you might get _really_ angry.” He smiled bigger, then put up his hand so Steve wouldn’t say anything. “I don’t think that. I feel like it’s true sometimes, but I don’t _think_ it’s true, and that’s why I’m telling you.”

“Thanks for telling me,” Steve said.

“And?”

“For what it’s worth, it’s not like that with me. You remember enough that if I say I’ll never get mad at you, you’ll know how fucking stupid that is. I’m sort of an asshole? But it doesn’t really matter, because--” he tried to think of how to say it--“there is no ‘in trouble’ anymore. Does that make sense?”

“Not really,” Bucky said. He was wincing again. “I mean--I get the concept.”

“I wish I could prove it.”

“Well, you can’t. I do trust you more than I used to, or I wouldn’t tell you when I don’t. So you must be doing something right in the whole handling the wrong soldier department.” Steve’s weakness must have been showing on his face because Bucky reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry for telling you about all this stuff. I mean--I think maybe you’ve got to know--or I need you to know and, yeah, that’s selfish of me--but I know it’s not a lot of fun to hear about.”

“I mean, I’m guessing it’s not fun to feel it either,” Steve said.

“It’s okay,” Bucky said. “It doesn’t bother me that much.”

\--///--

Later that day he said, “Look, it’s bad enough you have to know. And I know you have to know, okay? But I like Sam, and he doesn’t have to know. Let him think I’m normal.”

“Well, that’s fair,” Steve said. He had to admit that he’d have felt the same.

\--///--

Sam had a holier than thou expression as he produced a piece of rock candy on a stick out of his jacket pocket. It was electric blue and wrapped in plastic. “Even though it’s unacceptable that you wanted to put this on the cake, I brought it for you,” he told Bucky.

Bucky narrowed his eyes. “Is it poisoned?”

“I see where you’re coming from since I hate you so much,” Sam said, “but no. It’s legit unpoisoned rock candy.”

Bucky unwrapped the candy and handed it to Steve, who took a bite and said, “Raspberry.” He gave it back to Bucky who started eating it. “Why is it blue if it’s raspberry?” Steve asked Sam.

“It’s a thing. Blue raspberry.”

“I know that’s a flavor now, but why? How did it get to be a flavor? Does it taste different from regular raspberry? I can’t tell.”

“It just tastes different because of the color--the power of suggestion,” Bucky said.

“I have to tell you guys that no one sat me down and explained this to me in kindergarten,” Sam said. “It’s a mystery to me too. Stop pussyfooting and help me organize our materials.”

“Oh, how will you ever organize a box of cake mix,” said Steve.

“I also have icing, don’t be shitty.”

“What kind of icing,” Steve said.

“ _Well let me tell you_ ,” bulldozed Sam and he began to remove his purchases from a Safeway bag and slam them down on the kitchen table."Chocolate for the dirt, mint for the grass, strawberry for blood on the dead people coming out of the earth."

"What the fuck? You didn’t say any dead people coming out of the earth," Bucky said.

"Ooh, scared Barnes," Sam said.

"Not scared Wilson, but you made it sound like it was a regular, peaceful graveyard just with giant worms."

"I got model people," Sam said. "We can use them again for another cake."

"Dear Lord," Bucky said and put his head down on the table.

"Sam, are you saying we’re going to lick strawberry icing off the stomachs of a bunch of little toy people who’ve been who knows where?"

"Yeah, that’s more action than Steve’s ever had," Bucky said.

"They obviously came wrapped in plastic, Steve, what the fuck. And licking icing off a plastic model of a human is _not_ sex, even if that’s what they told you guys when you were growing up.”

"No, that is what sex is, don’t burst my bubble," Bucky said.

"You know, whenever Bucky talks about ‘dolls’ he dated in the forties, he’s talking about actual dolls that he pretended were girls."

“Shh. Here’s my gravestones,” Sam said.

“Now who decided to mass produce these?” Bucky said.

“Really makes you think, doesn’t it,” Sam said. “Anyway, here’s the cake mix. Deep chocolate. We good with that? Never mind, I don’t care what you think. But are we?”

Bucky gave Steve a nasty look--he thought Steve had let something slip about Bucky and food. He really hadn’t, Sam was just being thoughtful. But chocolate was fine for Bucky--which was good, how depressing would it be if it wasn’t?--and he said so. Mint and strawberry, Steve didn’t know about, but Bucky would figure out an excuse to avoid them if he needed to.

Bucky didn’t seem too long term bothered. Actually he seemed happy and Steve was a little jealous. Not _really_ jealous, or anything, but just feeling like Bucky liked him less for knowing the bad stuff. With Sam there was nothing to juggle or disguise. Not that Sam could not know anything, with how he’d _met_ Bucky, but for all he knew it was over and done with now and they could plunge uncomplicatedly into a lifetime of hijinks. Well, that wasn’t true--Sam wasn’t stupid--but suspecting was different from knowing all the gory details.

Sam wouldn’t let Steve and Bucky stir the cake mix. “You’ll break the bowl,” he said.

“Sam, this is _our house_ ,” Steve said. “Look at how we never break anything.”

“Steve broke the toaster,” Bucky said. “He threw it on the floor because his bagel caught on fire because his favorite cartoon for babies was on.”

“The animation is really good,” Steve said. “I didn’t mean to throw it. I _knocked_ it. I was just surprised.”

“He breaks forks when he gets mad,” Bucky said.

“And you broke my phone just by standing next to it, so shut it.”

“I told you, it doesn’t affect technology, you’re making that up,” Bucky said. “Think how inefficient that would have been. Come on Sam, gimme that.” He took the bowl of cake mix and stirred it so quickly it must have looked like a blur to Sam.

“You’re no fun,” Sam said.

Steve said, “I feel like your idea of cooking club is more like cooking theater. Buck and I aren’t actually allowed to do anything.”

“Right, it’s a club where the club activity is watching me cook,” Sam said. “Actually, you can preheat the oven.”

“Way ahead of you, I already preheated it,” Bucky said. Sam high-fived him.

“Steve, you can put the cake tin in the oven,” Sam said. “I’ll pour it in though, I don’t want you to spill it.”

“Smart move,” Bucky said.

Steve pretended to accidentally drop the tin of cake mix on the way to the oven. Of course he caught it. There were thirty-five minutes until it could come out, but that didn’t mean the struggle was over. Sam needed to plan out how everything would be organized on the cake. The gravestones needed to be evenly spaced. “A real graveyard isn’t this nice,” Steve complained.

“Yeah so that’s no reason not to do better,” Sam said.

Once the fucking gravestones were judged up to snuff, Sam started eating the chocolate icing.

“Do you realize you can actually shoot this stuff like a gun?” he asked, and shot it into Bucky and Steve’s mouths, and then at length into his own.

“I mean, it’s not exactly like a gun,” Steve said.

“Wow, thanks for explaining,” said Sam. “Shit, I know you get what you pay for but this is so fucking awful it’s burning my mouth.”

“It’s not that bad,” Steve said.

“It just doesn’t taste like chocolate is all.”

Steve glanced at Bucky although he kind of guessed what he’d see before he did. Well, not exactly--Bucky was leaning against the counter, standing, breathing, not throwing up. But Steve had just had a feeling there was something, and Bucky met his eyes with a tired, bored look, like yeah, what else is new?

“Hit me with that again,” Steve said, and when Sam did he tasted the icing more carefully. “This isn’t chocolate, this is maple.”

“Oh, sorry,” Sam said. “You guys okay with maple? Bucky?”

Bucky looked at Sam with a perfectly normal expression, smiled, opened his mouth, twisted it up, looked down, and sighed. It might have passed for a very vague and complicated response on the subject of maple icing, except that he turned away from the counter, grabbed Steve, and marched him out of his room. “We’ll see you in a minute.”

Bucky pulled them into his room, shut the door, and looked at Steve intently, still holding onto his shoulders. “What is it?” Steve asked. Bucky raised his eyebrows at him. “You gotta tell me, Buck, I can’t read your mind.” Bucky sighed, let go of him, and kicked his trash can across the room so hard it left a dent in the wall. He walked over and kicked it again. He was such an asshole acting like Steve was the only of them who ever broke things.

“Hey, quit it. We’ll figure it out, whatever it is.” Bucky stopped kicking the trash can and turned to face him expectantly. “Maybe you can’t talk,” Steve said, and Bucky rolled his eyes. “You know, it would be easier if you’d nod or shake your head.” Bucky gave him a death glare and then bent down and started punching the trash can. He was using his human hand and it was a metal trash can so Steve dropped to a crouch and started trying to get it away from him. “Hey, stop, you don’t need to do that. It’s okay, I’m with you. We’ll figure it out.”

Bucky stopped punching the trash can and they both sat on the floor of his room, with Bucky leaning against the wall. He had his knees up and didn’t look too pleased.

“So, looks like you can’t talk,” Steve said. Bucky met his eyes. “And I’m guessing there’s a reason you aren’t nodding or anything either.” Bucky opened his eyes really wide with about the same impression as his typical eyeroll. “So I’m guessing you can’t do those things.” A thin smile. “You can’t use signs.” The smile continued. “Can you write?” The smile dropped off Bucky’s face and he made an annoyed noise. “I can’t understand that too well. Here.” Steve grabbed a pen and a stack of Post-it notes from Bucky’s desk and held them out to him. Bucky reached for the pen and his hand stopped. It hovered about half an inch from the pen and though he was shaking with the effort, it didn’t move any closer.

“Wow, those assholes thought things through,” Steve said. Bucky suddenly grabbed the pen and used it to stab a hole in his desk. Then he shifted his grip as if he was going to write on the desk, and the pen fell out of his hand. He looked at Steve and smiled in agreement.

“So, pretty much no nothing. I’m not gonna bother asking if you’re still pretty normal in your head--it seems too hard to answer--but you didn’t look mad when I said that, so I guess it’s okay I didn’t ask.” The tight smile again. It wasn’t so much that it was an angry smile or something--just deliberate, pretty much a substitute for a movement that couldn’t be made.

"So we pretty much got this," Steve said. "You want me to tell Sam you went to bed early?"

Bucky gave him a really intense pained look, the kind you would make if you couldn’t move anything but your eyes. Well, Steve guessed it would be like that. At some point it would probably happen, and he would find out for sure. He took the look as a hard no. “So we ask him to leave? I’ll come up with something. I can make myself look dumb if you want, say I have to stay up and organize my video game cartridges or my socks.”

Bucky snorted, but looked away for a minute, thinking. Then his expression settled and he looked back at Steve and made eye contact. He was ready to communicate.

"So you want Sam to leave?" The pained look. "No, you want him to stay." The deliberate smile. "Um…is there some kind of way to get you talking again?" Bucky huffed and leaned forward and took Steve’s wrist in his hand. He looked at him steadily with the hint of a not so deliberate smile.

"We’ll figure it out," Steve realized. "That’s it? You just want to try and get through it? You’re not doing this for me, are you? I hate that." Bucky smiled and rolled his eyes. "Okay, I don’t know what that means, but, okay. You know we got this."

It was weird to be strategizing so intensely about something as minor about whether they’d tell Sam to go home, but Steve thought, well, when there’s something wrong with you everything turns into a matter of strategy. It’s easy for strong and healthy people to save their worries for bigger things, and sometimes Bucky wasn’t so strong and healthy anymore.

Steve and Bucky’s conversation had taken about ten minutes and Sam was sitting at the table looking worried and pretending to text. If we he was really texting, he wouldn’t have slid his phone shut in midsentence. “Everything all right?”

"Bucky got triggered and he can’t talk. We still want to watch you cook."

"Well, come on and sit down," Sam said, "and don’t worry, I got a list of triggers a mile wide. I should keep them in my wallet."

"You do?" Steve said.

"Um, yeah, and you do too, Steve. You just don’t get hit as visibly as Bucky apparently does."

"Oh, it’s not like that. It’s not a PSD thing."

"You know a PSD is a Photoshop document, right? There’s a T in there somewhere."

"No, I mean, it’s—" Steve looked at Bucky to make sure he wasn’t too mad about Steve explaining a little. He didn’t look thrilled but he was going to let it pass. "They made him like this on purpose. They could—" He was trying to make it sound as normal and not-awful as possible, but he couldn’t think of a way to phrase it that didn’t sound raw and horrifying. "Bucky’s better at talking about this than I am." Bucky gave him a real smile, and it hit Steve that this must be how Bucky felt when he told Steve about things—trying to twist it into a shape that wouldn’t drag the whole conversation down under it. Steve kept looking Bucky in the eye, watching his reactions to the words he chose. "It’s like a switch they could flip to turn certain abilities on or off." Good. Neutral. "I’m guessing this was so you couldn’t give anything up under questioning?" Bucky grinned cheerfully at him. "I’m thinking the smile means yes. He can’t nod."

"Wow," said Sam. "I bet you wish you were just crazy like the rest of us." Bucky laughed. “Seriously, though, I know you must have the mother of all Photoshop documents, so it’s like double trigger action.”

Bucky smiled politely, shot a look at Steve, and banged on the table with his right hand. “I’m still not really sure if _I_ have PTSD,” Steve said, trying to hedge. “I mean, I don’t mean that it’s not a useful concept for some people, but other people have it so much worse, and how are you going to get through the day if--” Bucky banged on the table again and glared at him. “Bucky doesn’t have PTSD,” he capitulated. “Or whatever it’s called. He wants to make sure you know that.”

Steve almost started laughing while he was talking--it wasn’t that he had an opinion on whether Bucky had PTSD, but he was just remembering one time when he’d gingerly tried to introduce Bucky to the concept. He was just trying to explain it because Sam had said he should, badly regurgitating some of the things Sam had told him, under a vague impression that it might be helpful. “Oh, quit it,” Bucky had snapped--a rare thing for him in the early days--”I don’t have that.”

“So you know what it is? Maybe you can explain it to me, ‘cause--”

“I don’t need to know what it is. I don’t have it,” Bucky said. He opened the freezer door and pretended to look around at the frozen vegetables and ice cream.

“Oh, come on, you’re wasting the electricity,” Steve complained, but Bucky hadn’t closed the door until he brought up another topic of conversation.

Steve was pretty sure that Sam found the whole thing hilarious--he thought everyone and their cat had PTSD--but he didn’t argue about Bucky. “Well, that’s lucky for you, then,” he said.

Sam was a real sweetheart sometimes. It was something Bucky had said, but Steve agreed.

Bucky started moving the sugar tombstones around a little bit. At first Steve thought he was just fiddling, but it actually looked better. “I guess it’s okay,” Sam said. Bucky gave one of his asshole smiles. “But don’t touch them any more,” Sam said.

When the cake was ready, Sam gestured at the oven like a game show hostess indicating door number two. It was Bucky’s official designated task. “I guess you can open the oven door, Steve, if you don’t break it.” Steve opened the door and Bucky reached into the hot oven and put the tip of his finger in the cake. It came out clean, so he took the cake tin out and put it on the stove. “It wasn’t that exciting,” said Sam. “But wait a minute until we get to the good part.”

The good part was that when the cake got cool, Steve and Bucky got to watch Sam put things on it. He leaned over with his face about an inch away. Bucky tapped Steve on the arm a few times. “You making fun of Sam?” Steve asked when he noticed. Bucky smiled.

A minute later he started banging on the table and picked the Safeway bag up off the floor. There was nothing in it. “Sam, you forgot the gummy worms,” Steve said.

“Damn it!” Sam yelled. But he got over it quickly. “Bucky was right, they wouldn’t be to scale. People wouldn’t be scared of the zombies if the worms are almost as big.”

“People?” Steve said. “You got a bunch of friends coming over to look at our cake?”

“Well, I might Instagram it,” Sam said. “I want people to know about cooking club.”

“I don’t want people to know about cooking club,” Steve said. “It’s private.”

“This isn’t a sex dungeon,” Sam said. He moved one of his gravestones a quarter inch to the right on the cake. “Why are you embarrassed about something as great as cooking club?”

“I’m not embarrassed about cooking club, I just don’t see the need for telling everyone about everything you do in your spare time. If you want all of your Instagram followers to know about cooking club, why don’t you invite them?”

“If you can’t see the difference between who I want to tell about cooking club and who Iactually want with me at cooking club, then it’s probably because you’re like eighty-five gazillion years old.”

“Bucky, do you think it makes sense for Sam to show our private sanctified cooking club activities to every single person he’s ever talked to?” Bucky just smiled.

“I haven’t talked to most of my Instagram followers,” Sam said.

“See, that’s not normal,” Steve said. “They’re strangers. You put a picture of yourself with no shirt on.”

“Oh because no one’s ever seen a shirtless picture of you.” Bucky laughed and Sam jumped on it. “See, Bucky agrees with me.”

“He does not! Bucky, knock on the table if you agree with me.” Bucky rolled his eyes. “Oh come on, I know you agree with me. It’s creepy.”

“He agrees with _me_ ,” Sam said. “Bucky and I have a close relationship the likes of which you can only dream of. He’s sending me brainwaves. ‘Dear Sam, I agree with you--Steve is a loser. He doesn’t have so many Instagram followers like you and he’s really jealous about it--”

“I don’t have an Instagram, Bucky knows that--”

“‘Steve is so jealous because he doesn’t even have an Instagram--’”

“--but if I did, I would have a lot more followers. A lot.”

“‘Sam, can you please get Steve to stop acting like a really pumped dinosaur,’ Bucky is saying,” Sam said. “‘Also, could anything be greater than cooking club? You’re a genius.’”

Bucky went over and put his hand over Sam’s mouth. “He’s going to lick your hand,” Steve warned him. Bucky sighed. “I told you,” Steve said. Bucky wiped his hand on his pants and opened the silverware drawer. He rummaged around in there and pulled out a big knife. “Oh, now you’ve done it,” Steve said.

“He’s not going to kill me, he’s just wanting to cut the cake,” Sam said. Bucky smiled yes. “Which he knows is worse than killing me, because it’s _my_ cake. Okay, douchebag--just let me take a picture first.”

It turned out Bucky wanted to cut the cake for two reasons. First of all, he could put his piece sideways on his plate so he could eat the cake without touching any of the toppings. Second, he thought it was hilarious to give Steve a tiny slice of cake that was barely thicker than a sheet of paper. Bucky looked at Steve holding his plate with the tiny piece of cake and laughed uncontrollably.

Sam started laughing too. “This isn’t cooking club, this is bullying club,” Steve said. Bucky laughed so hard he shrieked. “You sound like a stupid bird,” Steve said. “You both do. Like a bunch of dumb seagulls who get their jollies from pestering people.” Sam and Bucky leaned against the counter and giggled in tandem. Steve advanced on the cake.

“Oh no you don’t,” Sam said.

“You let Bucky cut it!”

“Steve, be sensitive. Poor Bucky can’t even talk.” Bucky gave Steve a stern look. “Don’t take away his opportunity to be useful.” Bucky stuffed a huge bite of cake in his mouth. “I’ll cut a bigger piece for you, okay?” Bucky grabbed the cake tin and held it against his body with his elbow while still holding the fork and plate in his hands.

“You’re going to drop it!” Steve said. Bucky rolled his eyes at him as usual.

“Come on, don’t torture the man. Even if we are mean, bullying seagulls.” Bucky sighed and let Sam take the cake tin from him. Of course he’d been careful how he held it; he didn’t get any icing on his clothes.

Pretty soon Steve was eating an appropriate sized piece of cake. It was pretty good. “This is just like your dates with girls back in the old days,” he told Bucky, licking some icing off one of the human figures. “Sam, don’t take a fucking picture of this! What’s wrong with you? People will think i’m a cannibal.”

“No, this is just for my personal use, okay.”

Bucky and Steve ate a lot of cake. Sam actually didn’t have too much; it seemed like he had lost most of his interest in the cake once he had finished decorating it. Bucky left the top layers of all his pieces of cake, with the icing, gravestones, and zombies listing down toward the plate; so Steve took them and ate them too.

Sam made fun of Steve for washing the take tin to reuse it instead of throwing it away. Bucky just reached out and held up the Ziploc bag where Sam had put all the licked and washed figures of tiny people. “Yeah, you have to admit that’s past stingy and all the way to unsavory,” Steve said.

“Steve, these cost fifteen dollars!”

“That’s...equally unsavory?”

“A pretty successful get-together, I think!” Sam said cheerily when they’d put everything away. The best thing was he actually meant it. Steve wanted to thank him or tell him how great he was or something, but there was no point in making things awkward when they were amazingly not awkward.

Bucky thanked Sam, anyway. He was standing there looking at him when Sam was putting on his coat and Sam said, “What’s with that creepy face, Bucky? I don’t got any wings on for you to tear off.”

Bucky put his hand up to cover his smile. “He wants you to go over to him,” Steve explained. “He can’t beckon.”

Bucky shook Sam’s hand and then hugged him, a classically Bucky hug which was squeezy and made you feel like the most important person in the world. It sure worked on Sam; he laughed, almost shyly, and said, “Aw.” But he kept it cool and told both of them, “Thanks for having me over. Thanks for keeping me over.”

“It’s always a pleasure,” said Steve.

\--///--

An hour later, Steve was brushing his teeth when he heard Bucky bouncing around the apartment and singing one of the songs from the dance CD. Of course it was about how he was dangerous and girls should stay away from him. Steve had just started his mouthwash when the door banged open and Bucky burst in shouting, “I’M ONLY GONNA BREAK BREAK YOUR BREAK BREAK YOUR HEART!”

Steve gave him what he hoped was a singularly unimpressed look and continued gargling. He looked at his watch to make sure he made it the requisite minute.

“I don’t know what you do that for,” Bucky said. “Your teeth probably can’t even rot. I don’t do anything with mine and they look like diamonds.” He smiled. They didn’t. Steve kept gargling.

Bucky made an irritated noise. Steve just stared at him and gargled slower and slower. He billowed his cheeks out, then sucked them back in. He also started gargling as loud as possible and stepping closer and closer to Bucky. He checked his watch, stepped back to the sink, and spit out the mouthwash.

“That was a complete waste of time,” Bucky said.

“No, it wasn’t,” Steve said. “I didn’t want my mouth to taste like maple.”

“What? Oh. You think you’re pretty cute, don’t you,” Bucky said.

“Yes,” Steve said.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Next week, sex problems!


End file.
